[megablast]

> 30% was highway robbery from the start. Pure and simple.

Except it wasn't. Try getting an app published before the app store. It was 70% if you were lucky enough to find someone to publish it.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

[JimDabell]

I was there at the start and people were really happy about the App Store terms. The convenience of Stripe etc. didn’t exist and taking payments on mobile was a big, expensive effort lacking consumer trust. All of a sudden Apple comes in and handles hosting, payments, installation, etc. for you in a way people will actually use, without you having to incorporate or set up a merchant account. It was a huge convenience!

The things people complained about were the opaque, buggy, barely documented code signing processes; inconsistent, undocumented, NDAed rules (no published review guidelines and you couldn’t tell people why your application was rejected!); and incredibly slow review times (weeks!).

The idea that Apple introduced the 30% fee and people recoiled with horror is revisionist history. People jumped in with both feet for that because of the convenience Apple was offering around easily getting people to pay money and having it end up in your bank account.

[askafriend]

Not to mention retailers take a 30% cut of all video game sales still to this day and no one mentions them at all.

[DaiPlusPlus]

PocketGear was 40%, fwiw